A ntitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic reached
opposing conclusions about the legality of an acquisition of the
developer of a cancer-detection test by a DNA-sequencing supplier.
These decisions grapple with several hotly debated issues in
antitrust law. The transaction does not involve the horizontal
combination of competitors, but rather a vertical acquisition of a
customer in an emerging and innovative market, raising concerns
that, if the acquisition were not blocked, other current or
potential customers—developers of cancer-detection
tests—might be foreclosed from access to critical technology.
Decision-makers also had to confront the buyer's commitment
to solve the concerns by promising not to discriminate against
these other customers. Adding further complexity, these merger
challenges arose in an unusual procedural posture— especially
in Europe, where the transaction did not meet the relevant
thresholds for pre-merger notification— because the
